


White Painted Red; Green Painted Black

by excogs



Series: Gears Dark Knight week 2020 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Dark Knight | DRK (Final Fantasy XIV), Gen, Near Death Experiences, Odin (Final Fantasy XIV) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27460933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excogs/pseuds/excogs
Summary: "Do you truly wish it to end like this?"A voice ringing out in Ekho’s head comes as no surprise, though she notes that the Elementals speak in far fewer words. Whether this time was Them or merely an artifact of her failing resistance to the inorexable approach of the Lifestream, Ekho could not say."You have so much more you wished to do.""So many more lives you wished to save."
Series: Gears Dark Knight week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006350
Kudos: 13





	White Painted Red; Green Painted Black

**Author's Note:**

> For day 1 of Dark Knight week, "SINS / SALVATION." I wanted to try my hand at writing something outside of my comfort zone, and also talk about my wild Dark Knight / White Mage Ekho AU this week, so have part 1 of hopefully at least 2-3 parts of this?

Cloth of purest white stained a deep, wet red. The gentle green of the forest floor grayed under roiling skies, blackened by the soot of foul magicks. Yellow and blue uniforms, too, dusted black and red and more, the chromatic shimmer of sanded aether coating all around, reflecting the dull green aetherized sky.

Ekho Paialthe, however, noticed none of this. Not that her barely week-old White Mage robes had been torn and stained beyond recognition; not that conjurers she’d trained with for two years and Wood Wailers she’d treated in the infirmary lay dead in the grass all around her. Not that the pall of pressure all around that had announced the coming of the dread primal Odin had, moments ago, begun to lift in time with the dark rider’s fall to the stained earth and the clattering of the fell blade Zantetsuken into the bloody grass.

All Ekho Paialthe could think about is that the flow of blood from the wound she’d taken from that very same blade would not slow, and that the voices of the Elementals were growing dim as the world started to blur and fade around her.

The conjurers that remained standing rushed between the fallen, but there were many and more. It took the marshalling of near all of the men of the Wood Wailers, the Gods’ Quiver, Stillglade Fane, and the Order of the Twin Adder to lay Odin low, and the battle came with cost beyond measuring. Many of the Wood’s most devoted protectors would never return to Gridania.

_ Do you truly wish it to end like this? _

A voice ringing out in Ekho’s head comes as no surprise, though she notes that the Elementals speak in far fewer words. Whether this time was Them or merely an artifact of her failing resistance to the inorexable approach of the Lifestream, Ekho could not say.

_ You have so much more you wished to do. _

_ So many more lives you wished to save. _

The voice speaks slowly, methodically, intently. It already knows how Ekho feels.

_ Do you really think they will continue your work after you? The sanctimonious liars who claim the voice of the Elementals as their own and brandish it as a scepter, bringing naught but death to anyone unlike their own? They who preach isolationism and xenophobia through cupped, bloodied hands? _

Ekho opens her mouth to cry out, but no wail came, only a bloody cough splattering her fangs and the already-crimson dirt beneath her.

_ I don’t want to die, _ she thinks to herself.

_ You don’t have to. You are strong; tenacious. That well of white magic still surges within you, though it lay just out of your reach. _

The voice is calm, reassuring. Familiar. Desperate, Ekho clenches her free hand as she tries to will forth a spark of magic, but it fizzles out, and she hurts all the more for the attempt.

_ Now, now, _ the voice chastises,  _ What did I just say? You’ll only bring death more swiftly if you try that again. The Elementals will not save you, either, so save the energy you’d use to pray. You are no Padjal, after all. Not one of their chosen; merely Their servant. _

_ What can I do? _ Ekho asks.

_ You already know. You feel the well of power nearby; you need only reach out and claim it. It will take all your remaining strength, but that strength I know you have. _

The voice already knew what she was thinking. She would slip away if the healers yet standing did not reach her soon. With the last thread tethering her to the land above the soil, she had to act.

She knew she could. The voice believed in her. She believed in herself.

The hand clutched to her chest leaves its place stymying the flow of blood. Ekho is dazed, half-lidded, her mouth hanging open and red around the edges, and she cries a desperate, weak cry, willing herself forward just an ilm. Her body feels as if it is on fire, her wounds being pierced with a thousand thousand more needles with every shift she makes.

Closer. Closer. No matter the cost.

Darkness crawls in from the corners of her vision, obscuring the reddened white, blackened green, sootened yellow, and harried blue all around. Every fiber of Ekho’s being tells her to stop, but she can’t, not now, not when she’s this close. Not when the icy clutch of Menphina’s ward nears with every passing second.

Ekho forces her hand open, shaking, desperate, cracked fingers clawing forth. Two fingers find purchase, and a flood of aether inundates Ekho, causing her to writhe and wail, her wounds screaming, roiling. She holds on with every remaining drop of her strength.

_ Good, good. Remember this moment. Remember this pain. It will be the power that saves the Wood. _

There is a hunger on the voice’s edge; an expectation.

The flow stymies, the pain subsides, and an uneasy peace settles over Ekho. Whatever it was that she’d grabbed onto falls to aether, getting lost in the flow. For the moment, Ekho knows she is safe. Her arm crumples into the dirt, and she lets blackness claim her, the sound of a healer kneeling by her side escaping her notice as she falls unconscious.

As the dead and wounded are loaded into carriages bound home, the fell blade Zantetsuken is nowhere to be found.


End file.
